On Stage

...Yet we are expected to believe that, with Karen as their medium, they bewitch Bobby Gould into resolving to throw away an assured commercial success and a $ 10 million budget—at least until Charlie helps him regain his senses...

...The night I saw Speed-the-Plow the standing room at the Royale was packed with Madonna fans (who crowded the sidewalk after the show waiting for their idol to emerge...

...Carried away almost as much by the gesture of friendship as by the luscious financial prospects, Bobby proclaims his intention to make Charlie an associate producer for the film, on equal terms with himself...

...All doors are open to Charlie while he is holding this "hot property," he does not fail to remind us, yet he brings it to his old chum Bobby...

...He is not really attracted to her...

...An evening at Speed-the-Plow, though, is not an evening entirely wasted...

...Bobby wins the bet, but David Mamet doesn't feel obliged to give us any insight into why...

...Yet we are probably meant to understand the title as applying to the field of sex rather than agriculture...

...Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver, moreover, turn in superb performances throughout...

...But it ends up a lifeless essay on how an evening of idealistic entreaties, followed by a fling on the couch traditionally employed for casting, can bring about a total if fleeting intellectual transformation in a Hollywood producer who earlier had contentedly described himself as a competent whore...

...The book Karen has championed was originally left with Bobby by the studio chief for a "courtesy read"—a mildly flattering assessment that will permit the studio to reject it without seeming inconsiderate to the author...

...Let's suppose Karen somehow knew ahead of time that the book would land in Bobby Gould's office...

...A superficial complication arises immediately: The studio chief has just left for New York...

...Charlie Fox (Ron Silver), who started out with him in the mailroom 11 years ago, has not had quite the same luck in advancing his career and is a lesser studio executive...

...Indeed, being a little better acquainted with Hollywood movie people than with Chicago real estate salesmen, I'm less bothered by the relentless use of fourletter words in Speed-the-Plow than by their abuse in his Glengarry Glen Ross...

...In the exuberant mood created by the imminent deal, he wagered $500 that Bobby would not be able to "make her" by the following morning...

...The play's gaping flaws are partially redeemed by several scenes in the first and third acts that are written with ferocious sarcasm and executed with uninhibited rashness thanks to Gregory Mosher's direction...

...Karen does not have a real existence, or a dramatic one for that matter, and it would be idle to invent one for her...

...But where in Tinseltown could Mamet have observed a specimen like Karen...

...But I do recall seeing a Mamet piece at the Goodman Theater in Chicago years ago that might shed some light on the matter...

...Then we are still left with the impossible task of explaining how she could have foreseen the wager between Charlie and Bobby, which was the sole reason for the nocturnal tête-à-tête that provided her with the opportunity to deliver her pitch to the right man...

...It is not because Karen is played by Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone— who with a certain lack of modesty uses only the first of these names as the moniker for her triumphant career—that she turns everything topsy-turvy...

...On her visit to Bobby's apartment, for example, she is decked out in a dress that is both ill-fitting and unattractive...

...In fact, Madonna is given little opportunity to deploy the celebrated attributes that have made her famous everywhere (including Paris, where last summer Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, vainly hoping to become President of France this spring, personally received her like the First Lady...

...The real problem, although we have no inkling of it as the first act draws to a close, is going to be Bobby's temporary secretary, Karen...

...Curiously, it was not listed among the playwright's works in the Playbill...

...later, Charlie—furious at the duping of his partner—reads from the work with explosive contempt...

...I cannot guess whether Mamet thought the excerpts from the novel would reinforce the Pinteresque effect he is obviously striving for with Karen...

...As for that pivotal book, Mamet gives us a copious sampling of its contents during most of the second act and part of the third...

...Charlie manages to secure a 24-hour option on what in Hollywood is bound to be considered pure gold: the rights to a prison movie built around a popular star who is sure to attract long lines at the box office...

...Karen recites passages in a hushed voice, with morbid conviction...

...They merely have to get the official okay from the chief of the studio before the option expires at 10 o'clock the next morning...

...And there is, after all, something special about the fact that this is Madonna's first appearance in a Broadway play...

...Maybe Mamet fantasizes that such material might, under the right circumstances, actually transport an earthbound, dyedin-the-wool Hollywood type to the extent that he would jettison a "hot property" in order to produce it...

...Still, considering the magnitude of Madonna's fame, one cannot fail to be impressed by the disciplined way she submits to the obscure requirements of the playwright and the director, not to mention the costume designer...

...The point seems to have been to make her look and behave like the diametrical opposite of the star her admirers would flock to the theater to see...

...A final, bizarre note...

...Charlie is the one who happens to be fascinated by her—he can't believe how clumsy, innocent, and yes, virginal this temp appears to be...

...Purporting to dramatize the feelings of an explorer confronted with the mystical beliefs of a group of natives who inhabit a region near the North Pole, it displayed an awfulness quite similar to that of the book in the present play...

...Notwithstanding the disparity in rank, the two are great pals, as they constantly reassure each other...

...Nor can we fathom how the not very bright Karen has overwhelmed the rational faculties of a tough and cynical Hollywood exec, unless she was divinely inspired...

...His efficient secretary quickly locates him, however, and he promises to be back in his office in time to sign the big deal, whose promise he recognizes as quickly as Bobby did...

...But the sleuth meets obstacles here more daunting than those encountered by the critic...

...Compounding the improbability, let us assume she found the means to insinuate herself into the new production head's office at exactly the right moment...

...Mamet has made her an enigma—an unpoetical, irrational and finally irritating enigma...

...Nevertheless, I was moved to play detective and explore the hypothesis that she might be the particularly clever agent of the "Eastern sissy writer" whose novel was submitted to the studio, or perhaps his resourceful and devoted girlfriend...

...Bobby Gould (Joe Mantegna) has just become head of production at a major studio, and can't wait for the painters to remove their protective canvas from the furniture before moving into his new office...

...Madonna's acting in Speed-the-Plow has elicited unkind observations from some critics...

...But that is only after she has used talents more typical of a televangelist than a pop star to persuade him to drop the sure-fire prison screenplay and produce instead a movie based on a novel she believes is a profound masterpiece...

...The play does give us a sardonic and entirely appropriate view of the process by which films are conceived there, if not necessarily born...

...What we actually hear is a string of pseudo-philosophical banalities about how atomic radiation can religiously regenerate the world in the process of destroying it, or somesuch...

...Yet the office of a big-time Hollywood producer is the last place on earth where her typecouldlandasecretarialjoboneday and still have it the next...

...These implausibilities push us in the direction of accepting Karen as simply a virtuous and incompetent girl who is inclined to sudden enthusiasms...

...I'm not denying David Mamet's gifts as an observer...

...Speed-the-Plow wants to be a sharp and rousing satire of the American motion picture industry, still symbolized outside that urban dispersion known as Los Angeles by the name Hollywood...

...I have never seen her in concert or on screen, and I cannot appraise her dramatic skills with only the undefined and indefinable role of Karen to go on...

...Perhaps, however, Madonna should consider reappearing on Broadway in a part that would have more meaning for her and for the audience...

...I wouldn't dare attempt to explain this unbelievable, absolute silence...

...Yet when she first stepped onto the stage she was greeted with not the slightest hint of applause...

...She does share a tender moment with Bobby on the sofa in his apartment...

...The selections are ridiculous, not funny, and certainly not in any sense compelling...

...On Stage MAMET'S UNREAL HOLLYWOOD BY LEO SAUVAGE The new David Mamet play that opened recently at the Royale Theater is called Speed-the-Plow, apparently after an old form of farewell once used among farmers...

...This strikes me as unfair...

...Bobby gave it to Karen to vet, with the ulterior motive of getting her over to his place for a late-night assignation...

...This seems apt, given the author's fondness for spreading stercoreaceous metaphors around like manure...